The Great Foreshadowing of 1985

The whole Christopher Dorner thing has led to some alternative media mentions of the MOVE bombing back in 1985, so I thought this a good time to do a quick recap of that sign of things to come. Oh, and as for Dorner? Good fucking riddance. You want to kill corrupt Stormtroopers? Go ahead, make my day (heh, heh.) You want to kill civilians for the sin of being related to a Stormtrooper? You can burn in hell, though a cabin will do just as well…

MOVE was a black radical group led by a man called John Africa, some sort of hippie type thing except with not much inclination to believe that niceness can change the world. MOVE had had conflicts with the Philadelphia police force since the early 1970s, and in ’78 things came to a head when the Stormtroopers raided the group’s home. The result was a shootout that led to seven cops making unexpected trips to the hospital and to an eighth making an unexpected trip to the local mortuary. The bad blood had just gotten worse, and it wouldn’t end there.

For next few years, trouble stayed on the small side, with various members of MOVE being charged with arms offences, making terrorist threats etc., then once again the cops decided to raid the group’s home. Not being keen on authoritarian measures, the group resisted and another gunfight ensued. After several water cannons and 10,000 bullets failed to bring the radicals out into the open, the cops decided to do what any sensible, rational adult would do – they dropped a bomb on the building! I kid you not, they improvised a bomb from several pounds of plastic explosive and Tovex, took it up in a helicopter and dropped it on the house!

The house burst into fire, and as it burnt down and those inside tried to escape the flames the cops did what any honorable man would do – they shot them dead. I don’t know if that included the several children killed in the incident, but call me cynical for having no trouble imagining such cops shooting dead kids trying to flee a fire. At the end of the siege, only one woman and one 13 year old boy were still alive. The house itself had burnt to the ground – thanks in part to the fire brigade sitting on their fire hoses for over an hour after arriving at the scene – as had 65 other homes! I am assuming the authorities had the sense to evacuate the surrounding buildings, if only because there are no reports of deaths from the collateral damage, though it was a black neighborhood so one has to wonder just how unintended said damage was. There was an investigation which, despite being carried out by the same system that depends on cops for its survival, found nobody guilty of anything. Except for the woman who survived – she got seven years in jail for failing to die as planned.

Will it happen again? Well, of course it will, hence the title. Hell, it’s already happened again at Waco, and with 9/11 being used to justify anything as long as it is in defense of the plutocracy you can bet your ass that the American public hasn’t seen the last of this kind of atrocity – the only difference is that next time it won’t be a helicopter dropping the bomb, it will be a drone, and the order won’t come from some hot headed cop with shit for brains, it will come from some Ivy League educated asshole in the White House.

More on this charming bit of Americana below. Disregard the bit about the 25th anniversary, the video is a couple of years old.